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Here I am, a long time since I last wrote. I was very busy working on a project of mine night and day. This is actually a novel, which is now almost finished and that, I hope, will soon be in bookstores.
Now that I’m no longer worried about the adventures of Isabella and Santiago, I can take care of photography, my greatest passion.
I’ve been housebound for months writing so I had no time to take pictures. I have in my raw folder some shots of the Mont Blanc peaks in clouds, worth to be edited and published, but I only had time to look at these two. others coming soon!

I spent Christmas time to the mountains, same place as always. It was not easy to find inspiration for new landscapes. To be honest, I did not get inspiration at all, but I decided to have a walk with my Nikon eventually. I was lucky in finding a beautiful sunny day. I went to Val Ferret, even more beautiful and charming in winter time than in summer, enclosed among the rugged peaks of Mont Blanc and its rounded buttresses. I started walking in the snow trying to see with new eyes what I had seen and photographed many times. And I started thinking .. “square”. Square is a format I have not used often. It seems a difficult format, which requires a more accurate picture composition than others. I’ve bin many shots because when the square format was applied they seemed meaningless, while others seemed to improve proportion and symmetry. Anyhow, it was very interesting, entertaining and challenging as well.
Here are the first results:

My last photo tutorial has been published on donnamoderna.com today. It is about making greetings cards with one’s own photos to send special wishes to friends and relatives.
This idea came to my mind while thinking how to arrange gift for friends. For Christmas, this year, I decided to arrange only photographic gift. For that reason I’m going to Courmayeur next friday: just to take some good winter photos. It has been snowing for two weeks and I bet landscapes are amazing!

It’s not easy to set the exposure to take a good picture of a snowy landscape. Snow has to be white, a realistic white, and everything else has to be brilliant at the same time and that’s a real mess… By several trials, I developed my method, which is, basically, to overexpose a bit and correct the white balance during postproduction modificaton. Fresh new snow is quite different from old snow, so keep in mind to check the colors of every shot. Also histogram can help me in getting correct exposure, but I have always to remind myself that what my eyes see is different from what my camera freezes. This means that if the histogram is a bit as right, it’s ok. I have to pay attention to highlights, though!

I love mountains and I often get the chance to shot the snow. Fresh, candid snow is so poetic! But I took my favorite winter shot during a blizzard, from the windows of my room… every time that I see it, I feel cold!

I took this picture during my last day off to the mountains, to the Lac Blanc, near Argentière, in France. More than 2 hours and a raise of one thousand meters to get the Lac Blank Dew. We climbed very fast, in spite of all.

IIt was september, yet we found a lot of snow and the iron road was more difficult than expected. The stairs were frozen and I had to wear my gloves to grasp hold to them, but with gloves my hands slid! I was worried about my camera and my lenses into my backpack, of course!
Looking up, I sow the stairs disappearing into the fog… I started wondering where I was going…
We met few Ibexes, who materialized out of the fog in dead silence, like ghosts… in surreal feel… Everything was white and grey, and noiseless.

At the end, walking in that dreamy silence, we got the dew. The view was spectacular enough to leave us breathless.